THE HYMNS OF THE FIRST CHAPTER OF LUKE gI
eschatological hymn in which the future events are viewed as having already happened. That view is by no means certain. At any rate, the treatment of the hymn as a purely eschatological psalm seems to beg the question. The hymn may also very naturally be taken as a song of thanksgiving, possibly including future deeds of divine mercy, but spoken primarily in view of the event alluded to in verse 48.
But if Gunkel’s excision of verse 48 from the original Jewish psalm were justified, the insertion of that psalm in the infancy narrative would become even more incomprehensible than it is when the verse is retained. For in the former case that poem would be merely an eschatological psalm, which might have been spoken at any time in the history of Israel. What could possibly have led the author of the infancy narrative to attribute such a psalm to the mother of Jesus?
Even if, however, verse 48, as is done by Hillmann, Hilgenfeld, and Spitta, be retained as part of the original Jewish composition, the insertion of the hymn in the infancy narrative still remains very strange. Even verse 48 fixes the situation presupposed by the hymn only in the most general way; it establishes a woman as the speaker, but it does not at all establish the nature of the benefit which is to proceed from her to all generations. Judith, for example, as the rescuer of Israel, might conceivably have uttered such a hymn.” No doubt the words of verse 48 do suit the situation of Mary at this point in the narrative, and no doubt also the blessing which all generations are to ascribe to Mary is in relation to the blessing which Elisabeth has already in verse 45 pronounced upon her; perhaps also the words, “his handmaid,” in verse 48 may really be felt by the readers as corresponding to the words of Mary, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” in verse 38. But although such correspondences may be easy to detect after the hymn has already been inserted, they would hardly have occurred to anyone in the reading of a Jewish song. The Evangelist, on Spitta’s hypothesis, would almost have to be imagined as searching through a collection of Jewish songs in order to discover the one least unsuited to his purpose. What was the necessity of such a painful search? The narrative would have done very well without the Magnificat. Hillmann * considers it more probable that it was not the final redactor of the Gospel who inserted the Magnificat, but that the final redactor found it already inserted in the Jewish Christian narrative that he used in the first two chapters. That does not change the case
® Hilgenfeld (op. cit., 1901, pp. 214 f.) supposes that not so much Hannah is thought of as Judith, probably in the general meaning of Judza. “Nur mochte weniger die ihren Sohn dem Tempel weihende Hanna zu Grunde liegen als die Heldin Judith, wohl in der allgemeinen Be- essentially. In some respects, it would have been harder for a Jewish Christian writer to insert a purely Jewish, non-Christian hymn into his narrative than for a Gentile Christian to do so. A Jewish Christian writer might indeed be more likely to be familiar with such a hymn; it might conceivably have been familiar to him from childhood. But on the other hand he would be less likely to think that such a familiar Jewish hymn could be palmed off successfully as a hymn of Mary the mother of Jesus—unless, indeed, his idea was that Mary herself could be represented as making use of an already existing hymn to express her feelings in an hour of exultation, just as in the Church today we use familiar hymns to express our feeling at peculiar junctures of our lives. This last supposition would hardly be in accordance with the intention of the narrator. It would certainly not fit the case of the Benedictus, where in introducing the hymn the narrator says that Zacharias “was filled with the Holy Ghost and prophesied saying...”; for that form of introduction would hardly be used if the hymn were to be regarded merely as an already existing Jewish hymn that _ Zacharias used; and the strong presumption is that the supposition also does not fit the case of the Magnificat.
We are therefore brought back to the primary difficulty that faces the hypothesis which we have been discussing. How did this supposedly Jewish hymn ever come to be attributed to Mary, or, for that matter, to Elisabeth? In general, it is unlikely that a Jewish hymn would be inserted in such a narrative, and at such a place, by a Christian writer. Spitta points to similar cases in the Old Testament—for example, to the song of Hannah, which, he believes, was originally separate from its present context. But even granting for the sake of the argument the critical conclusions adopted by Spitta for the Old Testament passages, the present case is somewhat different. There, Hebrew writers would be adopting Hebrew hymns; here, a Christian writer would be adopting a Jewish hymn, and adopting it altogether without compulsion, for insertion in the most sacred part of his narrative. Would not the Christian consciousness of the newness of the Christian faith have precluded such disregard of the break between the old dispensation and the new?™ If the Evangelist (or the author of the narrative lying back of Lk. i-ii) had revised the supposed Jewish song so as to make a Christian hymn of it, then his employment of it would perhaps be in accordance with the habit of certain ancient writers, chough not, we think, with the habit of the author of Luke and Acts. But that he should insert a simple Jewish song without redaction or only with
& What Hillmann (09. cit., 1891, pp. 204-206) says about other such purely Jewish elements in the New Testament is problematical. And even if they are really Jewish, they are, as they appear in the New Testament, made serviceable to Christian ideas. In the case of the Magnificat that would not be the case.
such redaction as would not at all change the essential character of the hymn ® seems altogether beyond the bounds of probability. If the Evangelist were unscrupulous enough to put a simple Jewish hymn into the mouth of Mary, he would have been unscrupulous enough to make the hymn express his own ideas or refer to the later events in the life of Jesus.
The insertion by the Evangelist of this Jewish hymn would be explicable only if, when the Evangelist wrote, it was already regarded as a hymn of Mary. But that merely pushes the problem a step further back. How came the hymn to be attributed to Mary in the first place? If it were a Jewish song, it would very probably have been known as such by the primitive Jewish Christian community. How came that community, then, to put it into the mouth of the mother of the Lord, at a time, too, when she had probably not long been dead? °°
The hypothesis, then, that the Magnificat was originally just a Jewish song, a foreign element inserted into the infancy narrative, must be rejected. Is it then simply a part of that narrative? Was it composed by the author of the narrative—that is, by the author of Luke’s source in Lk. i-ii, since it has already been shown that composition by Luke himself is extremely unlikely? This hypothesis cannot altogether be excluded from consideration. The author of the source might conceivably have exercised the freedom of an ancient historian by attributing to his characters not words which they actually spoke, but words which, in view of the situation, they might fittingly have spoken.
65 The view of Gunkel that verse 48 is due to a redactor has already been considered. Hilgenfeld accepted this verse as part of the original Jewish psalm, but supposed that the words, “to Abraham, and to his seed for ever,” at the end of the hymn, in verse 55, constitute a Christian addition. Gunkel, on the other hand, lays great stress on just these latter words as being in accordance with the customary ending of a Jewish psalm. These questions are not important for our present argument. Our point is that neither of these additions, if additions they be, would at all make natural the inclusion of the Jewish hymns in the infancy narrative. If the redactor made interpolations in the hymns only to the extent that either Hilgenfeld’s or Gunkel’s view demands, his restraint is perhaps even more extraordinary than it would be if he made no interpolations at all. If he felt free to revise the hymns at all, why did he not make such revisions as would adapt them fully to his purpose?
58 In a renewed discussion of the hymns of Lk. i-ii (“Die chronologischen Notizen und die Hymnen in Le. 1 u. 2,” in Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche W: issenschaft, vii, 1906, pp. 303- 317), Spitta suggests (pp. 316 f.) that the hymns came into the hands of the Evangelist under the titles, “Of Mary,” “Of Zacharias,” “Of Simeon,” perhaps as parts of a collection dating from the early Christian period. Possibly, Spitta says, these names designated the persons that appear in Lk. i-ii. In that case, the hymns had been placed under the names of these persons by primitive Christianity without any real intention to represent them as the authors. But it is also possible, Spitta says further, that the hymns belonged originally to different persons, who really bore these same names. In that case those persons had nothing to do with the characters of the Christian narrative, but the chance similarity of name led the Evangelist to insert the hymns in their present positions. The former of these two suggestions by Spitta is liable to the objections urged above in the text; the latter is valuable chiefly as indicating some appreciation, on the part of the author, of the difficulties that beset all less adventurous suggestions.
An exceedingly strong objection to such a view arises from the absence, in the hymn, of specifically Christian ideas and of references to later events. A Christian writer, after the resurrection, in composing a hymn for the mother of the Lord, could hardly have failed to insert in it some more definite prophecy of the life or death or resurrection of her Son—unless indeed he were writing before the death of Mary, when such an anachronism would have provoked contradiction. But in this latter case he would scarcely have ventured to compose the hymn at all.
The force of this argument might perhaps be partially avoided if we could suppose that the Magnificat and Benedictus, in company with other parts of Lk. i, belonged originally to non-Christian tradition about John the Baptist, preserved in the circle of John’s disciples. The hypothesis that there is such non-Christian Johannine tradition in the first chapter of Luke was favored by Volter,®’ with an elaborate documentary theory, and has received the weighty support of Harnack,°* who, however, posits simply independent oral traditions - about John and about Jesus, not independent documents. Of course, if the Magnificat and Benedictus were composed by non-Christian disciples of John the Baptist, then the absence from them of specifically Christian ideas no longer requires explanation. But the documentary theory of Volter is quite inadequately supported; and the more cautious theory of Harnack (more cautious because, since traditions are less easily studied than documents, assertions can be made about them with greater impunity) is also incapable of proof. Of course, the theory that both hymns were originally Johannine and non-Christian presupposes the view that the Magnificat belonged originally to Elisabeth rather than to Mary. But that view is beset with difficulties. It might conceivably be held in a form which would suppose the Magnificat to have been transferred by the Christian historian from Elisabeth to Mary.°® But in view of the absence of specifically Christian ideas in the hymn, all motive for such transference was lacking. The most that might by any possibility be admitted is that if a choice had to be made between the view that the Magnificat was composed by a disciple of John and the view that it was simply a Jewish psalm, the former alternative might be preferable. But at best it would be merely the lesser of two improbabilities. At any rate, Harnack, as distinguished from Volter, cannot possibly use his theory of John-the-Baptist tradition to explain the absence of
58 Neue Untersuchungen zur Apostelgeschichte, 1911, pp. 108-110 (English translation, The Date of the Acts and of the Synoptic Gospels, 1911, pp. 153-156).
6° Compare Spitta, “ Die chronologischen Notizen und die Hymnen in Lc. 1 u. 2,” in Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, vii, 1906, pp. 311 Ff.
specifically Christian ideas in the hymns; because Harnack is quite certain that the hymns were composed by the Gentile Christian Luke.
One hypothesis alone overcomes all objections—the hypothesis that the Magnificat in its Greek form is actually derived from a Semitic song of Mary herself. That hypothesis explains, on the one hand, the absence from the hymn of specifically Christian ideas and of reference to later events in the life of Jesus; and it explains, on the other hand, the inclusion of such a hymn in a Christian narrative. It does justice, therefore, to the element of truth in Harnack’s position as over against Gunkel’s, and also to the element of truth in Gunkel’s position over against Harnack’s; but it avoids the errors which adhere to each of their positions. The more one studies alternative theories, the more one is led back to the simple view that the Magnificat was actually a song of Mary the mother of Jesus.
To many modern readers, no doubt, that will seem to be a highly adventurous conclusion. But it will seem so only because Joseph and Mary and Zacharias and Elisabeth as they appear in the infancy narrative are thought to be legendary figures. If, on the other hand, the narrative is based upon fact, why may not the mother of Jesus have been endowed with the gift of simple poetry, so that, under the immediate impression of her wonderful experience, she may have moulded her store of Scripture imagery, made part of her life from childhood, into this beautiful hymn of praise? Why must the mother of Jesus of Nazareth have been a nonentity? Just on naturalistic principles, the question may well be asked, to say nothing of the view which would make her the chosen vessel for the incarnation of the Son of God. Why may she not have possessed gifts that fitted her in some measure for her inestimable privilege? °°
The hypothesis becomes more acceptable when one examines again the manner in which the hymn is introduced. Modern criticism is perhaps correct in observing that the Magnificat is inserted rather loosely in the narrative. Perhaps, indeed, the first impression of the reader is that the hymn is intended to be regarded as an immediate answer of Mary to the greeting of Elisabeth. But that is by no means certain. There is no perfectly clear indication of it either in the introductory words, “And Mary said,” or in the hymn itself. It
60 Compare the significant admission of Harnack (Newe Untersuchungen zur Apostelgeschichte, I9II, p. 109, footnote; compare the English translation, The Date of the Acts and of the Synoptic Gospels, 1911, p. 155, footnote 1): “The stories [that is, the narrative of Jesus’ birth and infancy that lies back of Lk. i-ii] are essentially unitary in character. The circle from which they came had high reverence for Mary and placed her in a significant manner by the side of her Son. That did not come of itself, but must go back to the impression of Mary Secten Compare also Resch, “Das Kindheitsevangelium,” 1897, in Texte und Untersuchungen, x.5, p. 102.
6 Spitta (“Das Magnifikat, ein Psalm der Maria und nicht der Elisabeth,” in Theologische Abhandlungen fiir Holtzmann, 1902, pp. 89 f.) can even, without downright absurdity, venture the suggestion that perhaps the Evangelist thought of the Magnificat as arising not from the looks as though the hymn may perhaps have circulated separately, as a hymn of Mary, produced during the visit to Elisabeth, but without any indication of the exact day and hour when it was first spoken. It would then, if this view be right, have been inserted in the narrative of the infancy at the proper place, as an answer to the greeting of Elisabeth, but without any indication whatever that it was spoken extemporaneously. It could be an answer to Elisabeth’s greeting without being an immediate answer.
The words, “from henceforth,” or (more literally) “from now on,” in verse 48 constitute no insuperable objection to this view. These words may indeed refer to verse 45, “Blessed is she that believed”; they may represent Mary as seeing in this blessing just pronounced upon her by Elisabeth the first of a long series of similar pronouncements.” But this reference is by no means absolutely certain. The word “now” does not necessarily indicate the present moment, but may refer merely to a present period of time. And even if the reference of the phrase to verse 45 is correct, still the hypothesis just suggested as to the composition of the hymn does not become impossible; the blessing by Elisabeth could still be in view as the occasion of the hymn even if the hymn was not actually composed in detail until afterwards.
We are far from asserting that this view is certainly correct. It is, indeed, perhaps preferable to the view of Resch, that the hymn had gradually taken form in Mary’s mind between the annunciation and the visit of Elisabeth, so that without being in the strict sense extemporaneous it could be spoken immediately as an answer to Elisabeth’s greeting. Still other views are possible. If, for example, it should be insisted that the hymn was an utterance directly inspired by the Holy Spirit and so not subject to the requirements of preparation that would otherwise be expected, we have no objection of principle to such a view; and it might be rendered more acceptable to the modern mind by the consideration that improvising of poetry may have been practised at that time and in that part of the world to a degree which is unknown in our modern Western civilizatiou, so that the Spirit of God would not, according to the view in question, be using a method of utterance that was entirely out of connection with the natural habits of mind of the person through whom He would be speaking.
But our point is that the view which we outlined first is also not impossible, and it could be held in the fullest loyalty to the intention of the narrator. Hence the ridicule that has sometimes been vented upon the Lucan narrative, an EE NS i ee situation in the house of Elisabeth, but from the situation to which the immediately preceding words point—namely, from the “fulfilment” (redelwous) of the promises made to Mary.
for attributing to a simple Jewish maiden an improvised speech of such perfect artistic form, is misplaced. The sense of the narrative is not certainly violated if the Magnificat be regarded as the product of Mary’s meditation during the three months which she spent in the hill country of Judza.
Much of what has been said about the Magnificat could be repeated for the Benedictus. In the Benedictus, it is true, there is somewhat clearer indication of the occasion on which the hymn is intended to have been spoken, since the words, “And thou, child,” etc., in verses 76-79, do point to a child, already born, as forerunner of the Messianic age. It is not surprising, therefore, that those who regard this hymn as an originally non-Christian Jewish poem suppose that these last four verses constitute a Christian addition. But even when these verses are regarded (as they certainly ought to be regarded) as an original part of the hymn, there is in the hymn the same absence, as in the case of the Magnificat, of specifically Christian ideas, and therefore there is the same difficulty of supposing that the hymn was composed by the author of the narrative. Moreover, the Benedictus is even more loosely inserted in the narrative than is the Magnificat. If the narrator had desired to put a hymn into the mouth of Zacharias, he would naturally have done so at Lk. i64, when Zacharias regained his speech and “spake, blessing God.” Instead, the hymn is inserted in a general description ® of the growth of the child.®* Surely a possible explanation is that the hymn was circulated separately, and was delivered to the author of the narrative as a hymn of Zacharias, but without definite indication of the time when it was produced.®* Like the Magnificat it may well have been the product of partly conscious, though inspired, art.*”
The absence, then, of specifically Christian ideas in the Magnificat and Benedictus, the absence of reference to facts in the life of Jesus, points to a time when the Messianic hope was still couched in the terms of Old Testament
85 The suggestion of Wilkinson (op. cit., 1902, pp. 17, 32) that the compiler of the narrative regarded the Benedictus as an answer to the question, “What then shall this child be?” (verse 66), is not plausible.
66 Compare James Cooper, article “Benedictus,” in Hastings, Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, i, 1908, p. 190: “Zacharias may have had it [the psalm] ready for the long anticipated moment; may have recited it then, and written it afterwards.” That is perhaps possible, but there are some objections to it. And there is no clear indication in the narrative that the psalm was uttered at the time of the circumcision of John.
« Compare B. Weiss, Leben Jesu, 4te Aufl. i, 1902, p. 222: “This song of praise also exhibits the form of the Jewish Messianic hope in a primitiveness and purity which it did not retain in the later Christian period, and which could have been imitated only by a kind of artificial composition that was entirely foreign to that age. The song, moreover, is by no means put by the narrator into the mouth of Zacharias as an embellishment of the scene formed by the circum= cision (i.64), but is inserted after the close of that scene as a memory from that time, which was still handed down in the hill country of Judza.”” Compare the English translation, The Life of Christ, i, 1883, p. 242.
prophecy. On the other hand, the hymns are not simply Jewish hymns, composed in some unknown situation; for if they were, they could not have found a place in Lk. iti. They must, therefore, really have been produced by the persons to whom they are attributed in the narrative, and produced at a time when Old Testament prophecy had not yet been explained by its fulfilment. The fulfilment is at the door; it is no longer a thing of the dim and distant future: but the fashion of it is still unknown. The promised king has arrived at last, but the manner of His reign must still be learned only from the mysterious indications of prophecy. The Messiah is there, but He is still unknown. The hymns belong, in other words, exactly where the Evangelist has placed them.
If the hymns really were composed by Mary and by Zacharias, then they were nc doubt composed either in Hebrew or in Aramaic. The former hypothesis would explain best of all the Old Testament spirit and coloring of this poetry. And that the priest Zacharias, at least, should have composed such a. hymn in the sacred language, rather than in the language of every-day life, is by no means impossible; indeed, in view of the judgment of experts with regard to the language of Palestine at the time of Christ, it might almost be pronounced the more probable alternative. That a woman (Mary) should have composed a hymn in Hebrew is less natural,®* though perhaps not altogether impossible. If the hymns were composed in Aramaic—and in the case of the Magnificat that is more probable—then the task of the Greek translator was harder. He would not be able to use Septuagint renderings which had already been formulated for the very expressions which lay before him, but might be forced to consider first (of course quite naturally, and almost unconsciously) the Old Testament Hebrew expressions which were equivalent to the Aramaic expressions of the hymns. In view of the similarity between Hebrew and Aramaic, the task would not be over-difficult, especially if the translator was at home in the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Scriptures. Or else the Septuagint phrases might have occurred to the translator directly without reference to the Hebrew passages, as natural translations of the Aramaic. The suffusion of the original Aramaic hymns with the thought and language of the Old Testament would not be unnatural; for the Scriptures in an Aramaic form had become familiar to all through the oral translations in the synagogues.
The preceding discussion of the Magnificat and the Benedictus has at least served to refute the view of Harnack that the hymns were composed by the gesetzeseifrigen Familien verstanden die Frauen kein Hebraisch.” Compare the English transation, Introduction to the New Testament, 1909, ly poy:
Gentile Christian Luke. Even if they were not actually spoken by the persons whose names they bear, and at the period of time dealt with in the infancy narrative, still their Palestinian origin might be, and has often been, maintained; they may be at least Jewish Christian even if they are not pre-Christian.
Thus Ladeuze® agrees with Spitta in supposing that the hymns were circulated separately, before they found a place in their present context. But he rightly rejects the view that they were simply Jewish psalms. They were found in use, he thinks, by Luke in the Christian communities of Palestine. “May they not be,” he says, “both of them, simply that which, detached from the context, they seem to be, true psalms—Christian psalms spoken, under the action of the Spirit, in the meetings of the first communities in Palestine, and found by Luke at the same time as his Jewish Christian document concerning the infancy of Christ?” ”° Indeed, Ladeuze continues, Mary herself may have been the one who first sang the Magnificat among the believers. The concrete circumstances were already in the past; so she simply considered as a whole the work of which she had been the instrument.
This view, it may be remarked, does not explain so well as the view which we have advocated the absence from the hymn of definite references to the later events, such as the events in the public ministry of Jesus or such as the crucifixion and resurrection. But at least it preserves to the full the Palestinian character of the hymn.
J. Weiss, in the first and second editions of his commentary on the Gospels,” suggested that possibly the Magnificat may be regarded as a Jewish Christian psalm in which the Christian community gives thanks for the blessing which God has given it, verse 48 being an addition made in order to suit the song to its present context. The aorists in verses 51-54 refer, according to this hypothesis, to experiences of the Jewish Christian Church. The mighty act which, according to verse 51, God has performed is, Weiss suggests, the sending of Christ; the “lowly” of verse 52 are the members of the Christian community, who, strangely enough, were chosen from among the humbler classes of the people; the mighty ones who have been cast down from their thrones are, perhaps, Pilate and Herod, as also the persecutor Herod Agrippa, who died a sudden death in A.D. 44.
This interpretation of the psalm is, we think, hardly correct; the aorists of
1 Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, 2te Aufl., i, 1917, pp. 418 f. The hypothesis is stripped of many of its distinctive features in the third edition, which was revised, after Weiss’s death, the Magnificat may, for example, be understood, with Gunkel,” as referring to future events. Or, rather, some of the aorists may be understood in that way, since we see no reason why they must all be understood alike. The speaker of the hymn may already have experienced a mighty dispensation of God’s grace; and then, in reflection upon that, and upon other acts of divine mercy in the past history of Israel, may in prophetic vision have included with these events of past and present other events that were still to come; the future glories may thus be regarded simply as the unfolding of what God had already done and as so necessarily involved in it that distinctions of time lost their importance.
It is perfectly true, as J. Weiss suggested, that even if the aorists of the Magnificat refer to the future, there must have been some special occasion for praising these future acts of God just at the particular time when the poet was writing. This occasion, however, was present to Mary, at the time described in Lk. i, as well as to a writer of the Jewish Christian Church. After the marvellous experience which Mary had undergone at the annunciation, the coming of the Messiah was to the eye of faith already accomplished, and also (in principle) all the acts of God’s grace which are celebrated in verses 51-54.
The view of Wilkinson ™* with regard to the Magnificat is somewhat similar to that of J. Weiss, which has just been discussed; like Weiss he regards the hymn as “a hymn of the early Christian Church at Jerusalem.” Only, unlike Weiss, he is not obliged to regard verse 48 as an interpolation into the original poem; for he supposes—in what, it must be confessed, is a very unnatural way— that the term “handmaiden” in that verse was originally applied (in a collective sense) to the Christian community.
No doubt there are objections to these views of Wilkinson and Weiss. But at least these scholars have performed a service by insisting (as over against the view of Harnack) upon the genuinely Palestinian character of the hymn. In that respect they join forces with the advocates of a merely Jewish, as distinguished from Jewish Christian, origin for the Magnificat and Benedictus. It is true that Weiss does believe that the original Magnificat has suffered interpolation (at verse 48) when it was incorporated in the narrative as we now have it; and he holds that in the Benedictus (the former part of which otherwise he regards as the work of a Jewish Christian poet) verses 76 f. (though not all of verses 76-79) constitute a later addition.’* This latter opinion, as we have seen, is shared (with respect, however, to all of verses 76-79) quite generally by those scholars who regard the Benedictus as a merely Jewish hymn. But a significant admission is made in this connection by one of the most distinguished of these scholars—namely by Gunkel.”® The Christian writer who added verse 48 in the Magnificat and verses 76-79 in the Benedictus, he says, “knew the Old Testament well and perhaps wrote in a Semitic language,” so that “his additions are not perfectly easy to distinguish.” As a matter of fact, we think that the supposed “additions” are not to be distinguished at all, but are to be regarded as original parts of the hymns.’* But at least it is interesting that so distinguished a student of Semitic language and literature as Gunkel supposes that even the Christian interpolator must have been thoroughly familiar with the Old Testament and probably wrote in a Semitic language. We have here a strong testimony, among many others, to the Palestinian origin of the hymns.
The whole trend of recent investigation, therefore, has been strongly opposed to the view of Harnack that the Magnificat and Benedictus are artificial compositions of a Gentile Christian. The Palestinian origin of the hymns is recognized both by those who regard the hymns as purely Jewish, and by those who regard them as hymns of the Jewish Christian Church, this second view constituting a salutary protest against the error in the first. The element of truth in both these two views can be conserved, we think, and the element of error avoided, only if we suppose that the hymns actually originated in the situations where they are now placed in the infancy narrative. But at any rate the Palestinian character of the hymns stands firm.
That conclusion tends to confirm our opinion with regard to the Palestinian character of the whole narrative in Lk. i-ii. It is conceivable, of course, that a Gentile Christian writer, freely composing a narrative of the birth and infancy of Jesus, should have embellished his work with two genuinely Palestinian psalms; but that is less likely than that a Jewish Christian writer should have done so. At least, it would have to be supposed that the Gentile Christian writer was familiar enough with Palestine to pick up what suitable poetic material that country afforded. We can say, at any rate—to speak cautiously—that the Magnificat and Benedictus, far from tending to weaken our conviction as to the Palestinian origin of the whole narrative, as would certainly be the case if Harnack’s view of these hymns were right, really tend strongly to confirm that conviction. The character of these hymns is just what we should expect in a genuinely Palestinian narrative of the birth and infancy of Jesus.
76 With regard to the Benedictus, Lagrange (“Le récit de l’enfance de Jésus dans S. Luc,” in Revue Biblique Trimestrielle, iv, 1895, p. 168), appeals to the rod dodva:, of verses 74,
77, as indicating the same author in both parts. In general it may be said that there is no adequate reason whatever for regarding verses 76-79 as an addition.